I Can See You - by Paddy Summerfield c. 1986

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Photos of the Day: [a regular by now] Mr John Callaway

Ideas & Images from Portsmouth and Beyond

…from The Queen’s Inclosure, Cowplain.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees”. 

[William Blake from his communications with the Reverend John Trusler, 1799]

Sometimes it’s enough just to stand within a woodland and let imagination run wild. To seek out complex structures that depend upon each other to maintain their shape and form. Passageways and footpaths that might lead to familiar places or to other worlds. It’s the imperfect geometry of landscape I look for. The asymmetry of trees; the random intrusions of other flora; the invisible hand of homo sapiens…and the way that sunlight will always seek to create a strange geometry beneath a canopy of chaos.

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life…”  

[Herman Hesse; “Wandering: Notes and Sketches”]






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